Is this about music or equipment? Am I crazy or am I such a wise man lol.?

I kind of wish the offending post from @faustuss had been left up because I never got to see it.  Not because I’m in favor of online incivility – to the contrary, I feel it’s a gigantic problem—but because I’m wondering if what @faustus had to say was a measure of his exasperation with the OP bringing up the age-old topic of music vs. gear in the first place. A few of the responses that are on the thread are, I think, wry, winking acknowledgements of this.

"It’s all about the music" is one of the great pieties of the audiophile endeavor and I think we should all own up to what @larsman  noted – that a love of music and a love of audio gear are two separate pursuits. "It’s all about the music" is a great example of "virtue signaling" in our hobby, and it can get tiresome.

I attend a lot of audio shows and the choices of music and the response of attendees to those choices can be telling, especially the response to music requested by others in an exhibitor’s room. The best example is classical music. I have a couple of relatively brief selections that I find helpful in getting a handle on an unfamiliar component, pieces by Shostakovich and Brahms. When the music ends, I turn around and it’s usually just me and the guy with the iPad.

There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes, people will ask about the music I’ve requested or take a screenshot of the album cover. Some exhibitors will cycle through an interesting and lengthy playlist and if people leave, so be it. I do think that, when they’re on their own, people are more interested in exploring what Leonard Bernstein called "The Infinite Variety of Music" (the title of a 1966 book by the conductor) but in a communal audiophile setting, musical content often seems to take a back seat; it’s Dire Straits, Diana Krall, and "Fanfare for the Common Man" that puts audiophile behinds in the seats.

I’d also respectfully ask that you not talk so darned much when the music’s playing, whether that music is Nielsen or Nirvana.

Someone want to paraphrase what @faustuss had to say? A redacted version is fine!

@aquint ,

It was a bit of a kerfuffle over not much, really. If I remember correctly, it was a clash of ideologies about how a member’s worth here is directly proportional to whether they have a systems page in their profile or not. Wasn’t even that harsh. Then it took a bizarre turn about how after we all croak there won’t be a forum anymore, and how certain members here are nothing but old men and apparently impotent ones at that. Don’t ask me how he came to that conclusion, there are some things I just don’t want to know. You didn’t miss a lot, but you can catch a bit of it if you read @newton_john ’s copied tidbit.

And yes, I snickered when I wrote ’members’ and ’impotent’. 😆

Thanks to @thecarpathian.

The whole thing was worth it because you put "members" and "impotent" in tye same sentence. Wish I'd thought of that...

It's all about the music.  But something/s or someone/s has to produce it.  Thus, the rabbit hole and dollars, euros, pecos, yen....

My system is presently off.  There is no music. I don't consider roosters crowing, music. 

Without music a system would have no purpose (movies?  but not the same bug). 

My love of music drives me to build the best home possible for it. I also agree with the posters above who discuss that different systems reproduce different genres better and should lead the listener to new forms of music.

My system has done that for me: I have XLR patch bays between gear so I can easily switch amps, preamps, or speakers and so there is an endless variety of combinations and see what synergies can be produced, and what sounds best with a type of music. I can also easily switch from 2 to 5.1 channel and have a large collection of surround music. It is all about experiencing music in as many variations and ways possible. 

It's loads of fun and I have learned a lot.   

I think the OP could have just asked what has been the lifetime ratio of media to hardware purchases by each poster without sounding like he was trying to create a fight.  Mine is probably 1:1 when comes to overall spend, but in terms of equipment actually in play at any time, overall media spend to gear would be easily 3:1.